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Quotes about truth and lies

458 quotes from 240 people

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My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950John Bull’s Other Island (1907), Act II
- Humor
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.
Francis Bacon1561–1626Novum Organum (1620), Book I, Aphorism 7
- Thinking
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.
Cicero107–43 BCDe Officiis – On Duties (44 BC), Book II, section 43
- Fame
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Mark Twain1835–1910Following the Equator (1897), Ch. 2, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science…
Henri Poincaré1854–1912The Value of Science (1905)
- Facts
- Science
The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Henri Poincaré1854–1912Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. IX: Hypotheses in Physics, Tr. George Bruce Halsted (1913)
- Facts
- Science
Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Idler (1758–1760), No. 30 (11 November 1758)
- War & Peace
All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now.
Buckminster Fuller1895–1983Critical Path (1981)
The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
Buckminster Fuller1895–1983“Synergy” onwards, 1005.56
- Love
The state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Part I, Chapter 11, Thomas Common translationIn context
- Government
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Letter to the Addressers (1792)
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
Robert Frost1874–1963A Boy’s Will (1913, 1915), Mowing
- Facts
- Work
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 34e
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
William Blake1757–1827Proverbs of Hell, Line 69
Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.
Isaac Newton1643–1727These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions] (c. 1664)